The object of this dissertation is to consider the key role of the
temporal dimension in the process of modernity. From the
conceptual analysis of Koselleck, we draw a genealogy of the
multiples regimes of historicity that reveals a relation between the
category of acceleration and the concept of presentism. The studies
of the historian François Hartog and the sociologist Hartmut Rosa
have ...
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The object of this dissertation is to consider the key role of the
temporal dimension in the process of modernity. From the
conceptual analysis of Koselleck, we draw a genealogy of the
multiples regimes of historicity that reveals a relation between the
category of acceleration and the concept of presentism. The studies
of the historian François Hartog and the sociologist Hartmut Rosa
have guided us to develop our research.
Nowadays, the present seems disconnected from past and future
horizons, being reduced to a shortened time that reflects a social
experience of temporal indigence. ‘Going nowhere fast’ is the
paradox that seems to arise from our temporal trajectories in late
modernity, according to some theories of social acceleration and
specially the analysis of Hartmut Rosa. This thesis confront us with
a dual diagnosis of modernity, showing two-faced Janus: on the one
hand, the acceleration of time seems a historical constant since the
mid eighteenth century, while on the other, this same increase speed
has led to a kind of ‘immobility’ in which we find ourselves caught
between the urgency and the lack of horizons of our present,
detached from both the authority of the past (pre-modern) and
confidence in the future (of the first modernity ). Are we seeing the
two faces of the same phenomenon? Could the uncontrolled
acceleration drive us to a loss of hierarchy which prevents the
emancipatory project of modernity? [--]